We are presenting a paper at the MRS Conference on 19th March. It's a case study based on work with eBay - leveraging ad hoc U&A research in tandem with database analytics to understand who you are targeting and how best to go about it. Would love to see you there!

Weds 19th March – room 1 - 10.45am

From data to delivery: Ideas for smarter commercial decisions through analysis

delivering insight through inventive solutions

Engage Research is a leading insight consultancy offering full service research globally for some of the world’s biggest brands. Our philosophy is simple. We use our wide experience to design innovative methodologies which drive engagement to deliver intelligent, commercial solutions for our clients’ strategy and innovation needs.
In short, we offer “inventive solutions”

Inventive

Engagement is at the core of everything we do – keeping things interesting, challenging and rewarding for our clients, our respondents and ourselves, so that together we can generate sharper insights. It is this focus on engagement that drives our spirit of invention – our determination to keep coming up with new and better thinking.

What our clients say“What a delight to see evidence of the impact of gamification principles based on long term experimentation”

Our innovation and strategy tools blend science, art and our years of experience to ensure that our clients have metrics that matter and a deep understanding of the reasons why, so that findings can be actioned effectively and easily.

Clients are loving our experiential approach to qual and we will be launching more exciting qualitative tools this Summer, so check back!

What our clients say –“We have worked with Engage on a number of high profile and complex multi-country projects. Engage are:

– Flexible – they pull out all the stops!

– Always a senior-level, highly experienced & innovative team who are true ‘Solution-finders’ – whether working around a difficult fieldwork schedule or finding a clever methodological or analytical solution to apply

– Proactive and sharp in spotting insights and framing these in the context of what is important to the business/our teams strategically

– Credible practitioners who deliver consistently. Above all, just a pleasure to work with and a deeply trusted business partner

We bring eclectic influences into our research design and like to share what inspires us to add impetus to our clients. We routinely workshop our debriefs and are always looking for new ways to help stakeholders engage with the findings, whether by staging Christmas in July or creating a human bar chart! Our graphic designers create deliverables that live far beyond the presentation. Who doesn’t love a set of brand Top Trump cards?

What our clients say
“That was one of the best debriefs I have attended, you really told the story and made it come alive!”

We are at the forefront of industry discussion, continually challenging and improving established thinking

We lead industry conversation in many areas; we have presented at many conferences; had articles published on topics ranging from behavioural economics to consultative moderation and our blog has been read over 50 000 times. We create original thinking to share with the industry – Deborah Sleep will be speaking at this years MRS conference on ‘Ideas for smarter commercial decisions through analysis’.

What our clients say
”This paper is a must read for all quantitative researchers looking for practical evidence about this emerging paradigm”

EXPLORETM Our suite of tools informing every aspect of brand strategy

ALIVE: Brand uses our experiential client-consumer workshop approach to bring brands to life. Deep level brand exploration requires the extensive use of projective and enabling techniques, but these work best with respondents who are happy and able to take that step into the wackier side of qual!

ALIVE drives high levels of engagement, giving respondents the enthusiasm and confidence to take part in all sorts of weird and wonderful techniques, to build up a clear picture of the brand and inspire all sorts of ideas for where it should go next.

Case studyOur client’s brand had received little marketing support for too long and was slipping off the radar. With a particularly qual-resistant audience of traditional, middle-aged men and a fading brand, it took all the excitement of ALIVE sessions with clients, consumers, illustrators & a riot of projective techniques to bring the brand back to life.

What our clients say“Engage is a key research partner & they really are seen as part of our extended team. They consistently go above & beyond the call of duty. We value their technical research expertise and also their advice which demonstrates that they really understand our business.”

Brandnostic allows our clients to gain an in-depth understanding of where and how their brands play on the context of the market as a whole in order to optimise brand positioning and monitor brand health over time.

What our clients say:“Engage have delivered a robust and flexible way of tracking the performance of our new brands as they launch into the market, with each wave of output providing clarity of direction in their increasingly competitive environment. “

Brandnostic enables clients to:
• Understand market drivers – what they are and how powerful each is in driving brand preference
• Gain a detailed view of each brand on key functional and emotional drivers
• Assess brand strengths and weakness, enabling a clear direction to successfully grow brands
• Pinpoint competitive threats
• Monitor the impact of brands’ strategy and marketing actions over time

Engage can help with both classic, strategic and in depth U&As as well as the more tactical, issue-focussed pieces. The best U&As do not come out of a box, but are tailored to the business and its needs. There may be a role for some tried and tested modules but we leverage extensive experience in this area to create bespoke studies designed to answer key business objectives. We’ve run many such studies internationally and using a range of data collection techniques appropriate to market in order to deliver the best cost and time effective solutions per market.

U&A data is often detailed and complex, to the point that it can become so overwhelming that it is not fully used. Our job is not finished until the project is assimilated & acted upon.

So we tailor the content and format of deliverables, often workshopping outputs and delivering alternative reporting formats to encourage future use and help embed the research findings within the business.

What our clients say

“Engage take all the complexity and headache out of working across borders. They are nimble, flexible and good value for money. They know how to get the details right but also know how to ladder up to big insights. I could not manage the massive category deep dive studies for our business without their dedicated and hard working team”.

Whether you are segmenting to identify white space, key brand strongholds, people or occasions to target, Engage can help.

We have run segmentations of almost every type imaginable – attitudinal, behavioural, demographic, occasion & needs based – and can guide clients as to the most appropriate segmentation solution and segment prioritisation for their needs.

Segmentation data is often detailed and complex and can’t be fully leveraged until it is assimilated and acted upon. So we tailor the content and format of deliverables, often workshopping outputs and delivering alternative reporting formats to encourage immersion and activation.

“Despite their success and associated growth I’m pleased to say that Engage have stayed true to their ethos of senior team members truly being hands on with all projects. It makes a massive difference and gets everyone to better outcomes. I’ve been impressed with the creativity and flexibility the team apply to their proposals and their effectiveness at delivering the resulting insights and opportunities back to the business”

ALIVE is our consumer-client workshop approach. We mix consumers with stakeholders in inspiring venues, test and sample products, refine concepts, develop R&D briefs… all in a couple of days or less.

Case studyFood company had six prototype product flavours, a basic concept and a handful of claims. We conducted four x three hour ALIVE sessions each mixing 12 consumers with eight clients in a cookery school venue. The result: refined concept, narrowed product range, clear R&D spec, viable claims. Happy client.

What our clients say
“As always I think you did a fantastic job – well done. Thanks for a great day yesterday – entertaining as well as educational!”

Identifies which early-stage ideas represent the best opportunities for success and allows our Clients to direct resources at their best ideas, FAST!

The technique works for concept ideas, claims or recipes.

It can cover a 20-60 ideas, which would typically be a short description.

Case Study: Our Client had over 40 ideas generated via a qualitative brainstorm, they needed to work quickly to understand which were the best 10 to take into further development.

Client action: 5 ideas now in final product development. These will form the base of a totally new range that will be launched at the end of this year.

What our clients say
“fantastic value for money, clear advice at each stage means we genuinely could fast track this innovation when it normally wouldn’t be possible!”

Evolve scope provides guidance on a range of business decisions from early innovation through to product and range optimisation.

The technique works for traditional product ‘ideas’, as well as claims, recipes, pack formats & magazine coverlines.

It can cover a small number of ideas – up to a maximum of 30.

What our clients say

“One of the team’s greatest assets is their ability to simplify complex projects, & present the learnings in a way that’s easily understandable for the wider business. They are always able to accommodate our changing demands – with a smile!”

Case StudyOur Client has a large and complex range, with products that are rotated on a seasonal basis. We needed to understand which range has the best potential to drive penetration/ reach – could this be different across accounts?

Client action:Identified short term wins, as well as portfolio planning for two and five years.

Our evolve mix concept and product testing framework…

…Is rigorous but flexible …Provides clear direction & depth of understanding …Allows R&D to be as clear as possible on how to take products forward

Our approach makes maximum use of diagnostics through both direct consumer feedback and smart analytics to ensure that our clients know what elements of the mix are working, which aren’t and why. We can also incorporate volumetric output into our final mix framework. Our approach is very open in order to take the pain out the process!

What our clients say“I highly regard engage as a very professional international research agency. I like the good consultancy, the high level of business understanding and the seamless and quick handling of projects. I have had a very good experience for concept testing, product and claims testing in multi-country projects. I can highly recommend to work with engage in this areas of research.”

Our approach to pack testing provides a flexible framework in which to test your packs at different stages of development. It is specifically adapted to take account of the role that packaging needs to play in terms of the key pack KPIs of attraction, differentiation, persuasion and targeting.

We employ a mix of both hard and soft metrics and make use of the latest eye-tracking technology to enable quick and actionable decision making.

What our clients say
“I find that working with Engage is a most pleasant experience. I know that I can count on precise work with creative and thoughtful analysis. I highly recommend Engage for both Qualitative and Quantitative consumer research.”

Finding the right price point is a critical step in the innovation process – and controlling the price of an existing product is a necessary component of successful brand management. We blend the latest pricing tools with our distinctive gamified approach to guide brand teams to make the best pricing decisions.

Areas we regularly advise on are

1) Entry Strategy – what is the opimum pricing strategy for my new product?

2) Handling Change – what happens when we change price, or other brands change price?

3) Can we charge more if we innovate – if we add features or improve the product how much more could it be worth?

4) Promotions – what is a product offer worth compared to other product offers?

What our clients say
“Always a pleasure working with a team that can distil the complex into practical solutions and deliver output in such a compelling way.”

Brands must improve efforts to gather customer opinion, according to study into online surveys

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The team

Our aim is to have very experienced, senior practitioners working hands-on for our clients throughout every project. This commitment underpins our ability to communicate research findings to clients, draw out the implications for their businesses and deliver actionable business intelligence and great value for their investment.

Most likely to be described by clients as….Loud, positive, honest, engaging (living the brand!), on the money

Passionate about:Exercise (usually seen at work in gym kit), food (working my way through the list of worlds best restaurants), trainers (best not to ask!) and Clyde my Springer Spaniel (loves the office but so far has resisted my attempts to teach him excel)